Zone Recording: Wireless

Welcome back readers to another installment of Zone Recording. Since I can remember, I always hated tripping over guitar cables, being tied up in a mess of black spaghetti, and being tied to one area of the stage! I absolutely hated that. I felt like a chained up dog. Well...

NO LONGER MY FRIENDS!

In this column I will explain how I integrated my new Electro Voice Wireless System into my rig.

First off, a huge thanks to Mark at EV for helping me out with this system. It usually would be an easy task, but since I use Parker guitars, there was a little more planning. The Parker has two channels (Mag and Piezo) coming out of the guitar, and each of those channels have to be split and processed separately.

Mark suggested two of the EV RE-2 wireless systems with the WTU-2 Pro body packs!

I housed the units in a 2U Gator case with power being supplied by a ART Powerbase 4x4 1U rack.

Check it...

The left RE-2 runs my Mag or electric side of the rig, while the RE-2 on the right runs the Piezo or acoustic side of the rig.

Here is a rear view of the case...

So now onto the "Special Cable". This cable has to be a TRS cable out of the Parker, sending signal into two WTU-2 Bodypacks. Here is the "Special Cable".

It's basically a Y cable TRS that will connect to the Bodypacks. On the Y part it is labeled Mag and Piezo. I then plug these into the transmitters...

This then gets mounted on my belt/pockets, or strap, and of course the L jack into the Parker.

Now, the output of the receivers (RE-2) go into this awesome piece from Radial Eng. It's called the PZ-DI.

These go into the inputs of the PZ-DI of course, labeled Electric and Acoustic.

Here there are necessary switches for phase, filters and ground lifts. The electric signal goes through and onto a Digitech Whammy, then into a Pigtronix Envelope, and finally into the VTX Head. The blue VC-12 controls the head.

The acoustic signal has an FX loop active with a Digitech Digiverb patched in and then fed out via the XLR balanced signal into either the PA direct, or a Hartke AC-150.

I can't express how happy I am with the new wireless system. No more being tied down to the stage! I have to watch I spend more time on the stage then off now!